First We Prep...

I dislike painting. I dislike the disruption to my routine, I dislike tearing a room apart, I dislike prepping, I dislike the actual painting, I dislike the cleanup. The only thing I like about painting is the clean, tidy look right after I'm finished--in my studio, that will last about 15 minutes.

I particularly dislike prepping. Prepping is annoying because it has to be done, but there's no lasting benefit--unless you count not having paint all over everything permanently. However, I am not a neat painter, so painstaking prep work is essential.

My mother is a neat painter. I have no idea how she does it, unless it's from years of painting, first with those oil-based paints that were full of lead, and more recently with latex-based paints. She gets up on a Saturday morning, pulls out the old paint roller and older paint tray and gets to work. It seems she needs only a single piece of yesterday's newspaper, no matter the size of the job, and there are never any drips, spilled paint, or goofs--she simply doesn't allow it.

I, on the other hand, and one of the messiest painters around. The only time my can of paint doesn't have drips around it is when it's still at the paint store. When I paint, it is on everything and in everything--I've ruined pairs of eyeglasses by wearing them while painting a ceiling, and nearly every floor in the house has a few little drops and drips of paint on them. Prepping is an absolute necessity.

After moving all the furniture and equipment to the middle of the room yesterday, I took the time to start scraping open the cracks in preparation for spackling them. New problem: after 100 years, the finish coat on the plaster is finally beginning to fail. Several large pieces came away as I was scraping open the cracks, so I'll have to do some fancy faux-plasterwork to fix the spots. Scraping and spackling is an exercise in futility. The house is "indeterminate framing" (basically, a box)--good for flexing under shear stresses (e.g., it moves but doesn't collapse in an earthquake), but tough on inflexible materials, such as plaster. Add to that a condition known as "soil heave," and you have a house that is always in need of spackling. A lot of our neighbors have ripped out the plaster and replaced it with more flexible gypsum dryboard (sheetrock), but I am trying to hang onto the plaster as long as I can: replacing plaster with sheetrock requires a professional and is expensive.

Once most of the cracks were scraped open, and the debris swept up, it was time for covering and taping. This is the hardest part of the prep work, but the most important. Guaranteed: if I don't cover it with taped-down plastic, it will have paint on it before I'm finished. Two 10x20' plastic drop cloths were enough to cover the gigantic mound of furniture in the middle of the room. Once covered, I went around the room, carefully taping down heavier 3' wide plastic. All the window frames were taped, the face-plates for the outlets and light switch removed, and the outlets and light switch themselves covered with painters tape. It took several hours, but I'm finally ready to start spackling and priming.